PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (WTAP) – Five key health issues are highlighted each year during the first week of April for National Public Health Week.
The American Public Health Association has been the organizer of the week-long memorial since its start in 1995.
The fifth key health issue of NPHW is strengthening the public health workforce, which Susan Polan, the Public Affairs And Advocacy Assistant Executive Director, says is done by identifying future challenges and addressing them.
“We’ve had the opportunity over the last 30 years to look back and to think about all of the advances we’ve made and all the challenges that we’ve addressed and how we’ve made it to the place we are,” says Polan. “And now let’s look to the future in the next 30 years, what are going to be the most immediate needs for public health?”
Nearby health departments we spoke to elaborated on the specific challenges the public health field is facing.
Courtney Midkiff, the Meigs County Health Department Administrator, says one challenge they face is the public’s lack of understanding of what public health is.
Improving workforce development is always a goal. It’s become a challenge in this day and age, you know, to find people who want to come into public health because a lot of people don’t know what public health is. You know, they think of doctors and nurses, and but the public health field is really a whole system.
Jack Pepper, the Athens County Health Department Administrator, says one of the best ways to combat this challenge, and strengthen the public health workforce, is partnering with schools to reach the next generations.
“We certainly are advocating – or doing some education at both the elementary, middle school, and high school levels here in Athens county.”
Pepper says their county’s public health workforce is benefitting from its partnership with Ohio University.
“We do engage with Ohio University often in in trying to make sure that students are aware, you know, of opportunity in public health,” says Pepper. “It’s really important as working professionals that we are taking the necessary steps to make sure that you know that that the next generation of potential employees is aware of the work that we do and how they can get involved.”
Another challenge the public health field faces is funding, according to the Marietta-Belpre And Mid-Ohio Valley Health Departments.
“One of the biggest threats to our workforce is the lack of – and pay and salaries,” says Malcolm Lanham, the Community Health and Threat Preparedness Director at the MOVHD. “When you hear that a state employee is getting a pay raise, we’re not getting that pay raise…. Because how we are structured funding wise…”
Health departments’ funding sources can vary, whether it is through a grant, a levy, or from the federal or state level, according to health officials we spoke with at nearby health departments.
Midkiff says the Meigs County Health Department is “largely funded by a one million dollar, 5-year tax levy”, but it supplements its programs “by writing for different grants”.
Becky Jones, a Public Health Nurse with the Marietta-Belpre Health Department echoes Midkiff’s on funding.
Midkiff encourages communities to “engage with the state on the state level for topics that come up for finding bills” that could support public health.
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